Political Paralysis in the Gilded
Age
1869-1896
Chapter 23
AMH2020
Derek Wingate
Themes
• The Post- Civil War Republic
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Political Corruption
• Disillusionment
The “Bloody Shirt” Elects Grant
• The political wrangling between Congress and President Johnson
soured the people on professional politicians.
• Many believed a good general would make a good president.
• U.S. Grant was a Northern war hero and a political green-horn.
• Grant was nominated by the Republicans who stressed his military
achievements by waving the “ bloody shirt.”
• “Vote as you Shoot”
• Democratic opponent was former Gov. of New York Horatio Seymour.
• Grant won the election.
Carnival of Corruption
• President Grant’s cabinet was a den of corruption.
• In 1872, the Credit Mobilier scandal, occurred when Union Pacific Railroad insiders formed the
Credit Mobilier construction company, then hired themselves to build the railroad. 348%
dividend.
• A New York newspaper finally busted it, and two members of Congress were formally censured
(the company had given some of its stock to the congressmen) and the Vice President himself was
shown to have accepted 20 shares of stock.
• In 1875, the public learned that the Whiskey Ring had robbed the Treasury of millions of dollars,
and when Grant’s own private secretary was shown to be one of the criminals
The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872
• By 1872, an election year, a power wave of disgust at Grant’s
administration was building, despite the worst of the scandals not having
been revealed yet.
• Liberal Republicans nominated Horace Greeley.
• The campaign was filled with more mudslinging (as usual), as Greeley was
called an atheist, a communist, a vegetarian, while Grant was called an
ignoramus, a drunkard, and a swindler. Grant crushed Greeley.
• In 1872, the Republican Congress passed a general amnesty act that
removed political disabilities from all but some 500 former Confederate
leaders
Depression, Deflation, and Inflation
• Panic of 1873-caused by to many train tracks, mines, factories, and
grain fields. The markets could not take it.
• Bankers made to many loans to finance these ventures. Loans went
unpaid and the credit based markets collapsed.
• the “cheap-money” supporters wanted greenbacks to be printed en
mass again, to create inflation.
• Supporters of “hard-money” convinced grant to veto a bill that would
have printed more money.
Depression, Deflation, and Inflation
continued…
• The Resumption Act of 1875 pledged the government to further
withdraw greenbacks and made all further redemption of paper
money in gold at face value, starting in 1879.
• Debtors now cried that silver was under-valued (another call for
inflation), but Grant refused to coin more silver dollars, which had
been stopped in 1873.
• In 1878, the Bland-Allison Act instructed the Treasury to buy and coin
between $2 million and $4 million worth of silver bullion each month.
• The Republican hard-money policy, unfortunately for it, led to the
election of a Democratic House of Representatives in 1874.
Pallid Politics in the Gilded Age
• “The Gilded Age,” was a term coined by Mark Twain hinting that times
looked good, yet if one scratched a bit below the surface, there were
problems. Times were filled with corruption and presidential election
squeakers, and even though Democrats and Republicans had similar ideas
on economic issues, there were fundamental differences.
• Republicans traced their lineage to Puritanism.
• Democrats were more like Lutherans and Roman Catholics.
• Democrats had strong support in the South.
• Republicans had strong votes in the North and the West, and from the
Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), an organization made up of former
Union veterans.
• Patronage
The Hayes-Tilden Standoff, 1876
• Grant almost ran for a third term before the House derailed that
proposal, so the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, dubbed
the “Great Unknown” because no one knew much about him, while
the Democrats ran Samuel Tilden.
• The election was very close, with Tilden getting 184 votes out of a
needed 185 in the Electoral College, but votes in four states,
Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and part of Oregon, were unsure
and disputed.
• The disputed states had sent in two sets of returns, one Democrat,
one Republican.
The Compromise of 1877 and the End of
Reconstruction
• The Electoral Count Act, passed in 1877, set up an electoral commission
that consisted of 15 men selected from the Senate, the House, and the
Supreme Court.
• In February of 1877, the Senate and the House met to settle the dispute,
and eventually, Hayes became president as a part of the rest of the
Compromise of 1877.
• For the North—Hayes would become president if he agreed to remove
troops from the remaining two Southern states where Union troops
remained (Louisiana and South Carolina).
• For the South—military rule and Reconstruction ended when the military
pulled out of the South.
The Birth of Jim Crow in the PostReconstruction South
• As Reconstruction ended and the military returned northward, whites
once again asserted their power.
• Literacy requirements for voting began, voter registration laws
emerged, and poll taxes began. These were all targeted at black
voters.
• Most blacks became sharecroppers or tenant farmers.
• In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson
that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional.
• Thus “Jim Crow” segregation was legalized.
Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes
• In 1877, the presidents of the nation’s four largest railroads decided
to cut wages by 10%.
• The failure of the railroad strike showed the weakness of the labor
movement, but this was partly caused by friction between races,
especially between the Irish and the Chinese.
• Irish-born Denis Kearney incited his followers to terrorize the Chinese.
• the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, was passed, barring any
Chinese from entering the United States—the first law limiting
immigration.
Garfield and Arthur
• In 1880, the Republicans nominated James A. Garfield, a man from
Ohio who had risen to the rank of major general in the Civil War,
Chester A. Arthur.
• The Democrats chose Winfield S. Hancock, a Civil War general who
appealed to the South due to his fair treatment of it during
Reconstruction and a veteran who had been wounded at Gettysburg,
and thus appealed to veterans.
• on September 19, 1881, Garfield died after having been shot in the
head by a crazy but disappointed office seeker, Charles J. Guiteau,
who used the insanity defense.
Chester A. Arthur
• Chester Arthur didn’t seem to be a good fit for the presidency, but he
surprised many by giving the cold shoulder to Stalwarts, his chief
supporters, and by calling for reform.
• The Pendleton Act of 1883, the so-called Magna Charta of civil-service
reform (awarding of government jobs based on ability, not just
because a buddy awarded the job).
• It also set up a Civil Service Commission, charged with administering
open competitive service, and offices not “classified” by the president
remained the fought-over footballs of politics.
The Blaine-Cleveland Mudslingers of 1884
• James G. Blaine became the Republican candidate, but some Republican
reformers, unable to stomach this, switched to the Democratic Party and
were called Mugwumps.
• The Democrats chose Grover Cleveland as their candidate but received a
shock when it was revealed that he might have been the father of an
illegitimate child.
• The campaign of 1884 was filled with perhaps the lowest mudslinging in
history.
• The contest depended on how New York chose, but unfortunately, one
foolish Republican insulted the race, faith, and patriotism of New York’s
heavy Irish population, and as a result, New York voted for Cleveland; that
was the difference.
“Old Grover” Takes Over
• Portly Grover Cleveland was the first Democratic president since
James Buchanan.
• Cleveland named two former Confederates to his cabinet, and at first
tried to adhere to the merit system (but eventually gave in to his
party and fired almost 2/3 of the 120,000 federal employees).
• Military pensions plagued Cleveland; these bills were given to Civil
War veterans to help them, but they were used fraudulently to give
money to all sorts of people.
Cleveland Battles for a Lower Tariff
and other points from the chapter
• By 1881, the Treasury had a surplus of $145 million, most of it having
come from the high tariff, and there was a lot of clamoring for
lowering the tariff, though big industrialists opposed it.
• Cleveland’s stance over tariffs cost him the election of 1888. Benjamin
Harrison, a republican, became president.
• Thomas R. REED
• McKinley Tariff Act
• Populist Party
• Homestead Strike
Cleveland and Depression
• Grover Cleveland won, but no sooner than he had stepped into the
presidency did the Depression of 1893 break out. Every 20 Years.
• About 8,000 American business houses collapsed in six months, and
dozens of railroad lines went into the hands of receivers.
• This time, Cleveland had a deficit and a problem, for the Treasury had
to issue gold for the notes that it had paid in the Sherman Silver
Purchase Act.
• Cleveland turned to J.P. Morgan and received a loan for 65 million in
gold.